League of Legends MMO Will Be Free to Play

A game that will strangely be referred to as LoL, League of Legends will be released this fall as a free to play MMO based on microtransactions and in-game currency use. Which should mean a lot to gamers, since League of Legends was nominated for the Game Critics Awards Best Strategy Game of E3 this year and, even though it didn’t win the award, it still is a big achievement.

“One of our goals at Riot has been to set a high quality bar for core games that are available for free online as we believe that a relentless focus on delivering tremendous value to online communities will earn player loyalty,” Brandon Beck, co-founder and CEO, Riot Games, said. “League of Legends is being built as a highly competitive core game that we believe will change many people’s minds about the type and caliber of games that can be offered for free.”

Combining RTS and RPG elements, League of Legends will put players in the shoes of a Summoner, a powerful spell caster that has to fight for influence and fun in the Valoran’s Fields of Justice, earning Influence and Riot points (the latter can be purchased for real money too), which can be later used for purchasing improvements, enhancements and extra designs. The nice thing is that the developers of League of Legends, Riot Games, promise that the players who will decide to pay for the game will not have a power advantage over the non-paying members. And this is a really huge thing!

But we’ll see for ourselves how LoL turns out to be sometime in September this year, when the game is released. Until then, you could consider ordering the League of Legends Collector’s Pack for $29.99 (coming with exclusive items, such as two unique Champion skins, as well as a number of Champions, Runes and Riot Points).